Choose a next step you can learn from

1. Give the step a beginning and an end

A useful step names an action you can take and an output you can inspect. “Improve meetings” leaves a great deal open. “Prepare a recap template and try it in one meeting” gives you somewhere to begin. Afterwards, you can check whether the template was created, whether anyone used it, and what happened.

The boundary matters during the work, too. State what the first attempt will not include. Perhaps you will not replace every management tool, redesign every meeting type, or ask the whole organization to change. This gives one idea a fair test without turning it into a major project before you have learned anything.

2. Connect the action to a question

The Model for Improvement presented by IHI, developed by Associates in Process Improvement, connects an aim, a way to recognize improvement, and a change to test. It also uses PDSA cycles to learn from trials and adapt the change.

Applied to our example, the question is not simply whether the team likes the template. Ask whether everyone leaves the meeting knowing who will do what. The answer could change the template itself. If no possible answer would affect a decision, clarify what you intend to learn before starting.

3. A hypothetical example: a meeting with no clear next step

Imagine a team holding a weekly work meeting. It produces plenty of notes, but nobody is sure which are decisions and which are merely ideas. The next meeting returns to the same questions. This is an illustrative scenario, not a description of a particular team or client.

The proposed test is to spend a few minutes reading a short recap at the end of the next meeting. Each action gets an owner and an agreed next step. Unresolved questions go on separate lines. Before the meeting, the team records what it expects. Afterwards, it checks which actions were clear and where clarification was still needed. This is not a promise of shorter meetings; the initial question is whether the recap creates shared understanding.

4. Record enough to inform the next attempt

IHI’s PDSA worksheet describes planning a test, carrying it out, learning from the outcome, and deciding how to adapt it. Keeping a record helps carry learning from one attempt to the next, rather than merely recording that an action happened.

For the meeting example, four short notes may be enough: what we tried; what we expected; what happened; and what we will change. If “handle this” kept appearing without a defined action, the next attempt could focus on clearer wording. If nobody opened the template, find out why before concluding it has no value.

5. Do not ask a small test to support a large claim

One successful meeting does not establish that the approach will work for every team. Perhaps the group was unusually small, the topic was straightforward, or everyone paid extra attention because it was a trial. Record the context alongside the outcome.

Distinguish three statements: “We managed to use the template,” “Participants understood the actions,” and “Our process improved over time.” They need different kinds of support. A partial answer can still identify the next useful question. Before extending a change to sensitive situations or expensive decisions, the testing needs to match the scope and risk.

6. Make dependencies visible

Sometimes the step is clear, but permission, information or another person is missing. Replace “make progress on this” with a note stating what is missing, who can provide it, and what can proceed without guessing. You might prepare the recap template before a decision is made about where to store it.

Set a time or condition for revisiting the dependency. A waiting task then stops masquerading as something you can do immediately. When the answer arrives, return to the original decision: is the information still relevant, and does the planned step still make sense?

Worksheet: a next step you can learn from

Choose one project and complete these sentences:

The direction we want to pursue is ___. The unresolved question is ___.

We will try ___ with ___, within ___. The first attempt will not include ___.

We expect to observe ___. We will also record ___. If ___ happens, we will pause or change direction.

What we need before starting is ___. The person who can provide it is ___.

After the test, we will decide ___. If the answer is still unclear, our next question will be ___.

Keep this beside the work and revisit it afterwards. Its value lies in the decision it helps you make.